


Dad And Daddy Need A Break

by callmesigyn



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Babysitting, British Slang, Domestic Fluff, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humorous Ending, Murder Mystery, Mycroft is a Softie, Police, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson Friendship, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, charming asshole, fedoras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 18:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19234567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmesigyn/pseuds/callmesigyn
Summary: John and Sherlock serve as babysitters for Mycroft’s two year old baby after a failed kidnap attempt.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey! So... I'm happy with the idea for the story but not really with the execution of it. Sorry if it sucks :P

“The floating red fedora with the white hands did it, I saw it!” She said with eyes wide as saucers. “He just touched my poor Willem and next thing I knew, my husband was dead!”

  
“And you’re saying the fedora did it?” He queried with a frown.

  
The woman shook her head comically. “The _red_ fedora”, she corrected as if it were the most important detail in the world.

  
“Of course”.

  
Sighing, Sherlock took a moment to observe the imagery in front of him. An old woman, pushing on eighty, with vintage curved reading glasses and a stiff upper lip, the faint mark of an old scar on her chin. Jewish, as apparent on the golden star of David hanging on her neck, and German, judging by the soft accent she still had despite probably living in a English-speaking country for a long time.

  
“And how would a hat cause a heart attack, Mrs. McCann?”

  
She looked around uncertain, as if making sure no one else was listening, and leaned closer to him as best as she could from her place on the couch and his on the armchair.

  
“Magic”, she whispered.

  
“ _... Magic?_ ”

  
He felt a headache coming up as he heard the old woman’s tale of every evidence of magic she collected throughout her several years, from her childhood from her dance years in bloody Paris.

  
“... And in the previous day when I went to visit my Willem’s job, I even saw-“

  
Before she could finish her sentence, they heard the door being unlocked and John walked inside the flat. His face was almost entirely blocked by the groceries on his arms as he tried holding them and locking the door at the same time, but he saved a smile for the old lady anyway.

  
“Hello”, he said in a cheery tone that sickened Sherlock. How does one manage to be so happy at nine in the morning?

  
“Ah, but what a handsome young man”, Mrs McCann sighed as John dropped the bags on the kitchen table. “You remind me so much of my late husband Willem”.

  
Sherlock saw John’s cheeks redden slightly in embarrassment and chose to take advantage of the situation. He rose quickly from the armchair, buttoning up his suit jacket as he did so.

  
“Hello, John. Goodbye, Mrs McCann”, he said, opening the door for her.

  
The movement startled her, judging by the noise coming from her lap as the old, rusty iron teacup clanged against the porcelain of the plate.

  
“But I haven’t to-“

  
“I don’t care that you survived Nazi German by cloaking yourself with magic, Mrs McCann”, he snapped. “Your husband had a heart attack and died, _not uncommon_. If you wish to discuss this when you’re sober, please don’t”.

  
She scurried out of the apartment faster than he would have given her credit for and the door made a ricocheting ripple as Sherlock slammed it behind her.

  
“What the bleeding hell is wrong with you?” Asked John from the kitchen, hands placed on his waist like some opinionated mum.

  
“She clearly abused her liquor”, he replied as if he actually expected the excuse to work on the most infuriatingly stubborn man he had ever met. “I have no patience for drunks”.

  
“Oh”, John said sarcastically. “How did you figure that out? Was it by the dried drops of alcohol on the sleeves of her sweater? Or maybe by the different way she walked that was perhaps too straight forward for it to be something unconsciously?”

  
_Yes._

  
Sherlock stopped the word from his mouth and instead replied: “When she came in, she annoyingly seemed fit to greet me by kissing both of my cheeks. I smelt the alcohol instantly”, he tilted his head. “I do have nostrils, you know?”

  
John scoffed. “Might be the only thing human in you”.

  
A knock to the door prevented Sherlock from replying as John busied himself opening it.

  
“Speaking of humanity or lack thereof...” The short man mumbled just before Mycroft wafted through the threshold, cane almost silent in his fight with the floor.

  
“Hello little brother”, he said to Sherlock. Turning to John, he frowned his brows and quirked his lips in a sardonic smirk. “ _Hello_... little brother’s... _pet”_.

  
“Pet?!” John wailed incredulously.

  
Sherlock’s voice as he put away the groceries interrupted John’s cries of indignation.

  
“If you mean pet as in a domestic dog or a cat, I’d say John is more like an outraged parakeet. However, if you mean pet as in the French _petit_ , that’s accurate as well”.

  
Mycroft chuckled slightly. “If one may judge a man by his grooming, I’d say Mr. Watson is a cockatiel”.

  
Sherlock didn’t laugh, but there was a small upturned curve to the edge of his lips, one that made John glare at him. Choosing then to ignore them, the parakeet turned to Mycroft.

  
“What are you doing here?”

  
Mycroft seemed shocked. “What? Am I not allowed to pay my dear brother a visit?”

  
Sherlock took a seat on the armchair again, a plastic cup of coffee warming his hands. “Allowed? Yes. Welcomed? No”.

  
His brother scoffed.

  
“Very well... I need your help”, he squinted his eyes as if it pained him to hear such words.

  
“Murder?” He asked immediately, making John eyes widen and his lips part in affront.

  
_“... Babysitting”_ , Mycroft corrected, also looking at him as John was.

  
“Oh”, Sherlock sighed in a deep voice. “No”.

  
Mycroft moved himself closer, looking around in disgust at the apartment only for a few seconds before turning to gaze again into his brother’s blue-green eyes.

  
“No?” He and John asked simultaneously.

  
“I don’t want your sprog with me”.

  
Mycroft exhaled sharply and Sherlock cursed himself for only then noticing the fact that the man was limping more than usual, his grip white as snow on the head of his cane as he supported himself more on his right leg.

  
“What happened to the leg?” He asked, motioning to the left one.

  
“Merely a flesh wound, but I’m afraid it was the reason I came to you”, he motioned for John to come closer and help him sit on the couch. Taking a deep breath, he continued: “Just last night, I saw a shadow standing over my son’s cot. Unfortunately I scared it away before I could see who it was. It fled out of the window. But I have no doubt in my heart that, if I hadn’t been there, the shadow would’ve taken my baby. Now, as you know, my job forces me to travel quite a lot and I can’t take a two year old with me...”

  
“Go on”, urged John. Sherlock resisted the impulse to bite his nails, already knowing Mycroft’s next words.

  
“I need you to take little Ebenezer in for a few days”.


	2. Chapter 2

There might have been some moments in which Sherlock could say he felt something other than annoyance for his brother, perhaps even love. This was not one of those moments. The child had been wailing in his arms for half an hour already and Sherlock had no idea of what he was supposed to do. How can you know what a person wants if the person was a screaming infant who couldn’t even speak?

  
“John!”

  
He came through the door, laptop in hands, reading out loud some blog about how to properly take care of a baby.

  
“Right, so he just woke up, I adjusted the thermostat to eighteen degrees, you’re holding her”, John took in the sight of Sherlock with his arms outstretched, holding the baby by the armpits as far away from him as possible. “... Albeit rather like a twerp, and I’ve heard enough whale sounds tonight to last a lifetime. Maybe he’s hungry?”

  
“I fed _it_ thirty minutes ago”.

  
John exhaled. “It’s a baby, Sherlock, not an aardvark”.

  
The man merely rolled his eyes and tried to bounce the red-faced child in his arms, which only made him cry harder.

  
“Aren’t you like the human Wikipedia? Shouldn’t you know how to handle a baby?”

  
Sherlock frowned. “When would such information ever be useful?”

  
“Now, apparently”, John replied. “I tried calling my mum, but-“

  
The phone rang and John immediately ran to answer it, only for disappointment to mar his face.

  
“How urgent is it?” He asked and simply hummed when a voice through the other side answered. “We’ll be there, bye”.

  
As John hung up the device, Sherlock asked: “What?”

  
“Lestrade”, he said. “There’s been a murder”.

  
Suddenly, Ebenezer’s nappy dropped with a wet plop.

  
“ _Sherlock..._ ”

  
“I see it”.

  
It was almost an hour later when they arrived on the crime scene, nappy changed and all. Sherlock ignored the stares, knowing the sight of him wearing a baby sling carrier over his usual trench coat looked odd to say the least. He saw Anderson stifling a laugh under his hand.

  
“Not a word”, Sherlock warned.

  
They walked inside the small building of red bricks, climbed the stairs to the second floor – the bounce in Sherlock’s steps making the baby squeal and laugh lightly – and entered Mrs. McCann’s flat to see the old woman lying face down on the floor, a broken arm and a knife plunged into her back.

  
“My God...” John whispered.

  
Lestrade left his position kneeling over the body and strode over to them, gazing at the baby with a confused expression on his face, but ultimately bypassing it.

  
“What happened?”

  
Lestrade let out a long, frustrated breath. “Well, she lived alone ever since her husband died so I think it might’ve been a robbery gon-“

  
“Oh, please don’t”, Sherlock snorted. “Someone broke in, probably a man judging by the smell of his cologne, whether he knew if Mrs. McCann would be here or not is debatable, but he knew well what he was doing, seeing as he plunged the knife right into her spinal cord aorta – that’s why there’s so much blood. He would have to be either incredibly lucky, a doctor or an assassin, but my money’s on the doctor. He faked a robbery afterwards, taking a few things close to the door but left the most obviously valuable things like computer and cell phone”, he hummed. “An assassin wouldn’t be so stupid and someone incredibly lucky would be even more so than our killer”.

  
“Must you do this?” John sighed.

  
“Don’t be ashamed of your vacuous mind, John. It doesn’t bother me”.

  
John could do nothing but roll his eyes and frown, looking at the dead body.

  
“Why would anyone want to kill an old lady?”

  
Lestrade shrugged.

  
“Did she have family?” Asked John.

  
“Other than her husband, yeah. Her daughter”, Lestrade nodded to the kitchen, where a woman that seemed to be in her forties sat on a stool. She had her dull brown hair in a bun at the top of her head and the tear streaks on her cheek were painted with black mascara.

  
“Excuse me, Ms...”

  
The woman turned to John. “ _Mrs._ Lanie Cox. Widowed”.

  
“Mrs. Cox, I must say I’m so, so sorry for your loss”, John uttered in genuine sympathy.

  
“Save it”, Lanie replied, making John’s mouth open in the way it did every time he got flustered. Sherlock merely raised an eyebrow.

  
The baby squirmed in the sling but before he could cry out, Sherlock placed a pacifier on Ebenezer’s little mouth and he sucked on it greedily. The woman smiled – a mournful look in her eyes as she gazed at the sight.

  
“You should hold on tightly to that one”, she hiccupped slightly.

  
“Do you have children, Mrs. Cox?” asked John.

  
She sighed. “I do... Or I did... I don’t _know_. I had one, six years ago. It was hard, you know? Having a baby at thirty-nine? I went through a lot of things, but she came out a healthy chubby girl. My father delivered her, Abigail”.

  
That caught Sherlock’s attention. “Your father was a doctor? Willem McCann?”

  
“Oh, dad reached State pension age a long time ago, but I had a home birth. He still worked as a paediatrician in the London Bridge Hospital though”, Lanie answered before breaking into another set of sobs.

  
“The same hospital he died in?”

  
“Sherlock!”

  
“It’s a hot spot”, Lanie snapped, her tears gone. A glint of rage sparkled in her brown eyes.

  
John turned to her to apologise, but did not catch the dangerous look of her. She fixated her gaze onto him then, gritting her teeth.

  
“My baby was kidnapped, my husband died and so did my father and now my mother. _Leave. Me. Be”_.

  
Feeling John’s grip on his shoulders, or rather how far he could reach them, Sherlock turned to leave before quickly looking over his shoulder and asking: “Do you know of any fedoras, by chance?”

  
He ducked, holding the baby protectively in his arms, but the last thing John saw was a shoe being thrown at his face.


	3. Chapter 3

“Calm down, it’s not that bad”, Sherlock said as he spoon-fed little Ebenezer with a plate of mashed potatoes.

  
He had changed the baby into a just-bought this _‘Tinder date went well’_ heavier onesie that John had thought hilarious, with a white set of gloves with green-coloured dinosaurs and a lighter green chullo. Barely two days with the sprog and he had already spent too much money on him.

  
John judged him through his swollen right eye, holding a rag with ice to his face. After their accidental baby shopping trip in Talbot yard, they had taken a cab to the London Bridge Hospital and sat down at a café near the building – where a young waitress took pity on John and had brought him some ice for his eye.

  
“I’m not sure whether or not you should feed that to a baby”, he said, nodding to the mashed potatoes.

  
“Mycroft texted that he would be back sometime in the afternoon so whatever his sprog poos out later, it’s not my problem”.

  
Sherlock felt himself flinch when saying the words, but gave John his _charming-asshole_ smile and hoped he wouldn’t notice. The crease on his eyes, however, hinted that he did notice it.

  
“That makes you sad”.

  
Sherlock scoffed. “No, it doesn’t”.

  
“Yes, it does... Sherlock, you _do_ have feelings!” He laughed.

  
“Oh, _ha-ha_ , yes. You’re hilarious, John”, he replied sarcastically, eyes rolling.

  
Ebenezer saw John laughing and gave him a squeal of his own, pink gums with only two small lower teeth showing – spewing some of the potatoes on his chin. Sherlock felt his mouth twitch upwards when John leaned his head down to clean it, but that soon faded at seeing a man in the table behind them, wearing a red fedora and looking at the exchange with an insoluble gleam in his eyes.

  
Quickly pulling out his phone and sending a text to Molly concerning the case, Sherlock looked back to the man to find him staring at him. Excusing himself to go to the bathroom, Sherlock got up from his table and sat down in front of the man.

  
“Good day, sir”.

  
The man seemed stunned as Sherlock took in his appearance. Short and balding, but with a peculiar sort of rugged average look about him.

  
_“I-Uh-I... Goo-“_

  
“I saw you staring at me and my partner”.

  
The man’s eyes widened. “ _Oh!_ I swear I’m not a homophobe”.

  
Sherlock halted and thought of what his plan was exactly. Simply come up to the man and demand his confession for crimes Sherlock was not sure he had committed? What if he was dangerous – armed with a knife or an illegal gun? He could hurt little Ebenezer, and Sherlock couldn’t let that happen.

  
He took a deep breath and said: “Yes. _We-we_ are... gay”.

  
“I was just admiring your baby, I lost mine thirteen years ago. You guys make an adorable family”.

  
Sherlock feigned a smile. “Thank you, and I apologise for accusing you. You just never know these days”.

  
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and read a reply from Molly.

  
“You just never know who can be in front of you”, the man smiled.

  
“Don’t I know it”, Sherlock said and rose from the chair. “Again, I’m sorry to disturb you. Goodbye”.

  
Returning to his table, John was giving some water for Ebenezer to drink of his bottle and smiled at him once he sat down again. John could tease him all he liked about him coming to enjoy the baby’s presence, but Sherlock could tell John did too.

  
That’s why he was almost remorseful as he handed John the phone with Molly’s text opened. He saw John’s eyes widen and his hips start to turn.

  
“Don’t look”, Sherlock advised. “Call Lestrade”.

  
As John picked up his cell to call for the detective, Ebenezer started to cry. Sherlock could barely hush him as his attention was on the man rising from the other table, sparing him a glance before bestriding.

  
John touched the baby’s back, ear glued to the phone. “Go”, he said.

  
Sherlock took off running in the direction the man had fled. He ran and ran, following the red fedora that seemed to float as it stood out from the crowd of black coats and black hats. Sherlock clocked the runaway until they reached the pier.

  
The man, now cornered, took out a gun from his pants and shot at the sky, scaring the throng in the pier. They ran away in fright, but Sherlock stood his ground.

  
“You know, it’s very impolite to steal babies”, he said.

  
“What makes you think I’m guilty of stealing babies?”

  
“Let’s see, _Domhnall_ ”, he addressed him by name, taking satisfaction from the way the man fliched as a hand moved to wipe sweat on his jeans. “Thirteen years ago, you had a baby after getting your medical diploma but the baby died, your wife blamed you, left you and turned up dead a few weeks later – very obvious, in my opinion. But your carelessness is excused, given that I think that was your first kill. It wasn’t the last though, correct? In Scotland they called you the Rumpelstiltskin, kidnapping five babies before disappearing around the same time you moved to London. After that, four more babies had gone missing, in London, in the same way they had in Scotland. Also, you practically ran from the café, which stands in front of a hospital where people tend to have babies in. Also the very place Dr. Willem McCann worked in, probably assisted you too, but for what purposes I don’t know. After he died of a heart attack with syringe mark between his toes, which can cause air embolism, McCann’s wife claimed to have seen a red fedora before she too showed up dead. All of which makes you look – in fact – _pathetically_ guilty”.

  
“That’s circumstantial evidence”, the Rumpelstiltskin said.

  
Sherlock shrugged. “Still evidence”.

  
He felt the heat right before he heard the shot, but it merely grazed near his foot.

  
“What did you do with the babies, Domhnall?”

  
Another shot, but this time from behind him. Sherlock’s eyes moved to the Rumpelstiltskin falling on the ground to Anderson holding the gun that hit the criminal on the chest. He nodded to Anderson in acknowledgement, which was returned, and then turned to John standing beside Lestrade, little Ebenezer in the sling carrier around John’s chest.

  
“Is he alright?” Sherlock asked.

  
John nodded. “Despite cripping a crapple, he’s fine”.

  
“And the other babies?”

  
Lestrade exhaled, looking at Anderson in disappointment – either for shooting the criminal or not letting the criminal shoot Sherlock, he wasn’t sure.

  
“If he survives that, we’ll interrogate him to find out where he kept the children. If he doesn’t... _Well_ , we’ll search every possible location he’s connected to – flat, work... And pray we find them”.

"Thank Molly", John uttered.

  
“What the bloody hell happened here?” Asked a voice behind them.

  
They all turned to see Mycroft, still slightly limping and walking towards them with his cane, two men in suits behind him.

  
“How did you know we were here?” John asked.

  
“You forget... _I’m me”_ , he answered simply, moving to pick up his son from the sling, supporting his weight on his good leg and the cane now held by one of the man in a suit. “How did little Ebenezer behaved?”

  
“You know what? Sherlock, Mycroft, Ebenezer... What the hell is wrong with the names on your family?” Asked Lestrade.

  
“Family names, I’m sure”, Sherlock replied.

  
“What was your father’s name?” John questioned.

  
Sherlock and Mycroft said in unison: “Arthur”.

  
Mycroft smiled and held Ebenezer above him, making the baby laugh. Reading the words in the onesie, however, he scoffed and stared at Sherlock. “I told you I met her on Canada”.


End file.
